Dedes’ toughest call: leaving Lakers for Knicks

For a fellow with a gift for describing what others do, Spero Dedes could tell the story of his own recent months many ways.

Becoming voice of the Knicks, a boyhood dream come true. Being promoted to do the majority of the NFL season on CBS, his big break. Heading home to the New York area, a family reunion.

And yet ...

Short-circuiting a growing love affair with Lakers fans, heartbreaking. Leaving the sun-splashed place he thought he would live – and wanted to live – for the rest of his days, a personal sacrifice. Banging the irresistible force of his national ambition against the immovable object that was the Lakers' insistence he prioritize their local market, a commentary on the evolution of the sports broadcasting business.

For a story with no actual villain and a main character getting to choose between fabulous job opportunities with the NBA's bookend big-city icons, there was still a young man unable to sleep for more than an hour without waking up in a cold sweat – not knowing if he should be coming or going.

It was that difficult a call for a guy whose composure on the air is such that he has in a very short time distinguished himself with a delivery so clean, strong and prepared that it sounds uncommonly natural in this world of talking heads.

In the end, he left.

He's no Kobe Bryant, but Spero Dedes is a competitor, too – in the fundamental way that everyone should be driven from within to utilize his or her talents.

And in that regard, he did the right thing.

He was true to himself.

"I'm 32," Dedes said. "I'm not ready to put my feet up and just coast. The way I made my decision was: If I pass up on this opportunity in New York with the Knicks and with CBS, would I be able to live with myself? And the answer was no. I knew I would just go insane, wondering for the rest of my life: 'What if I had chased it and gone after it?' "

The Lakers refused to allow Dedes, who missed five of 92 Lakers games last season to broadcast the NCAA basketball tournament and NFL for CBS, to moonlight elsewhere if promoted from their radio voice to TV voice. Lakers spokesman John Black called it a "non-negotiable" point for decision-makers Jeanie Buss and Tim Harris on the Lakers' business end, and Dedes conceded it was something he was made fully aware of but struggled with while waffling on his decision in the end.

Where Dedes and the Lakers, building toward their own regional sports network through Time Warner Cable for the 2012-13 season, couldn't reconcile was a basic question of whether the world actually revolves around the Lakers.

"We wanted someone who would commit to that position and prioritize this job as so important as not to miss games," Black said. "We want that person not to want to do other things. We think it's that important."

It's an easy counter-argument that having the elite national guy for your local team offers some cachet to offset that loss of continuity. Yet it's also the Lakers' prerogative when they are the almighty Lakers with Chick Hearn's streak of 3,338 consecutive games in their annals to protect that Lakers brand to the end.

Dedes' responsibility, meanwhile, is to develop his brand – which he'll do in a newly expanded role of eight-to-10 NFL broadcasts with analyst Steve Beuerlein on CBS. When Dedes tried to envision turning down every network offer while getting to keep all that he loved about L.A. and the Lakers, it felt uncomfortably "safe."

"I resigned myself," he said, "to the fact that maybe this is OK, maybe I can kind of turn off that little fire that I have in my stomach of wanting always to get to the top of my profession."

It's not OK, though.

And that's how in an NBA summer without any free agency because of this lockout, the Lakers still lost one of the league's great young talents to another team.

It's also how Dedes, as thankful as he is for what he's getting to do in New York (and he can be a little more thankful after his July 4 DWI arrest didn't lead the Knicks to void his new contract), found himself during his recent 40-day getaway in Greece musing to relatives about the past six years with the Lakers: "Literally the best time in my life."

Ask him for his fondest memory from the job, and he drops himself back in the secluded hotel far from downtown Orlando in June 2009. There, the Lakers partied all night after winning their first post-Shaq (and post-Chick) NBA championship – and Dedes puts his scene-setting skills to work by describing the magical feeling then as being "behind the curtain."

Dedes doesn't mean to slight the Knicks, but nostalgia will still be flowing for awhile.

"When you work for the Lakers, you're a part of a family that's just super tight, very close, very much a mom-and-pop kind of business," he said. "They took care of me – so much. They were incredible. That was why it was hard."

Dedes wound up mailing a thank-you letter to Lakers owner Jerry Buss. He exchanged meaningful e-mails with Jeanie Buss. He spoke with Harris, who even after it all Dedes describes as "like my big brother," and Black.

Basically, he said good-bye to his Lakers family.

However, he said: "I never really had a chance to put anything out to the fans."

"The part that really kind of hurts me the most is I finally in the last couple of years felt like I won the support of the fans out there, which in the beginning was the most intimidating part," Dedes said. "All I heard about when I first moved out there was, 'He's never going to be Chick.' 'Chick was God.' 'Chick was our guy.' 'All these guys who've come after him aren't nearly as good.'

"It was really kind of intimidating and daunting. I thought, 'They're never going to accept me here.' Fast-forward a few years down the road, and I felt like they were really opening their arms up toward me and I felt like I really had their support. And then to have to walk away, it sucked. It was really upsetting. I'm still sad about it."

Dedes will be the regular radio guy for the Knicks, although he might do about 30 games on TV for the Knicks with as much as primary TV play-by-play guy Mike Breen misses local games to do his national NBA work. (Cough, cough.)

The Lakers, being those almighty Lakers, move on, with talented people jumping at the chance to work for them, as usual. They burned their bridge with Joel Meyers in hopes of promoting Dedes, but they were happy to have charismatic Bill Macdonald set up to be the new radio guy. Upon Dedes' departure, they bumped Macdonald up to TV and turned to established Lakers insider John Ireland to work radio.

Macdonald and Ireland have been Staples Center regulars for years, so they know the drill.

On the wall there, Chick's retired jersey will remain, never outside the field of vision for whoever calls Lakers games ... Chick's statue outside the building forever part of the landscape, too.

And when you put it into context, that's where this story ends, in every way.

Dedes' departure serves as another reminder of what was – but will never be again.